MUSIC

Opening Night is a collection of instrumental music composed for the opening gala of the New Theater Hollywood by Danish composers MK Velsorf & Aase Nielsen. A cycle of minimal pieces for e-guitar, e-piano and backing tracks, the music was performed and recorded live from the stage balcony during the dress rehearsal, arrival of the guests and between speeches throughout the night.

The music is patient, minimal and groovy – consisting of sparse guitar vamps, drum and synth loops, it establishes a mood, or a tone: one of sun-soaked dreams, ecological dread and never-ending anticipation. Opening Night evokes the environmental furniture music of Erik Satie, as well as the light melancholia of Arthur Russell, the procedural TV score of Mike Post, and the sleazy atmospheres of certain Michael Mann films.

Designed to weave in and out of the listener’s consciousness, Opening Night is light in feel yet with a deep pull, breezily conjuring feelings of banality, pleasurable dissociation, and eerie repetition. The listener is invited to get in the car and stay for a while.

The New Theater Hollywood is a performance space run by artists Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, housed in the historic 49-seat 2nd Stage Theater in Hollywood’s largely defunct Theater Row, conceived as a space to develop and stage original theatrical productions in the crosswinds of performance, literature, contemporary art, film and television.

The legendary 1975 Fairfield Hall Croydon broadcast now available as a high quality vinyl pressing. Broadcast as part of a short UK tour following the release in 1974 of Autobahn.

It was quite unexpected to see the very prolific and talented Pieter Kock featuring on Macadam Mambo - which is usually used to new-comers - as he has released a lot in the past 2 years on very nice labels like RIO, Meakusma or Moonwalk X. But, the demos that he sent were so good that there was no question about doing something. And with a lot of possibilities, to prepare a double album that is now composed of 16 quality tracks for 1h20 of music… What vibes are in here! It’s heavy, loudly, loopy, mental, smokey, and always surprising. Pieter has is very own universe, and is without doubt one of the most interesting electronic musician at the moment.
Should we ask you to give chance to this opus, and tell you you won’t regret it ? We don’t think we need to do so... ☺

originally released on Main Street Records in 1999, and repressed in 2025.

originally released on Main Street Records in 1996, and repressed in 2025.

originally released on Main Street Records in 1995, and repressed in 2025.

remastered and released by Moritz von Oswald himself in 2004, repressed in 2025. Originally released on Planet E in 1993.

Originally released in 1995 as the M series, Vainqueur's outstanding and universal masterpiece of minimal techno has been repressed in 2025 and includes a remix by Maurizio.

"A growing, single-minded confidence in his thing practically makes time stand still and places us right in the moment and momentum of the music. Crucially, whilst clearly referencing foundational styles, it’s a masterclass in innovation not imitation" - boomkat

Carrier presents Tender Spirits, the third turn on his eponymous series that explores his abstractions at its most sparse and cerebral.

Space maintains great purpose for Guy Brewer, having experimented with this previously for multiple drum-focused missives as Carrier. On his latest release, he treads deeper into the furthest regions of dub deconstruction, with Tender Spirits offering a serene path to the inbetween.

Across 8+ minutes, Light Candles, To Mark The Way moves towards the muted sublime; a gentle half time’d bliss that ebbs and floats across the enveloping mist. Slow Punctures gradually returns to dusk, eerily surveying the hollowed-out remains of its dub architecture with an off-kilter lurch. Carpathian echoes further in stark reduction, a weightless atonal zone anchored by the abstracted pressure suspended within.

Tender Spirits tracks Carrier at exciting new parallels, unfurling his most ascendant and capacious music to date.

Rivet’s new album for Editions Mego is an uplifting and joyous affair coming in the wake of tragedy and disenchantment. It is yet another rebirth from an artist willing to take a step back and reprise the current situation he is in. Mika Hallbäck has a long credible history in the Swedish underground. First recognised for his industrial techno works under the Grovskopa moniker he worked privately on more experimental works that eventually came out as On Feather and Wire, an album released on Editions Mego in 2020. After much acclaim for this bold new direction that blended electronic abstraction, pop and industrial forms into a heavy synthetic trip two tragedies struck. One was the passing of label boss Peter Rehberg and then the passing of his dog Lilo, who was as close as a companion one could have. These events led to the release of the more unsettling follow up L+P-2 (Lilo and Pita minus two) on Midnight Shift Records in 2023. Peck Glamour sees Rivet return to the reawakened Editions Mego with an album of optimism inspired by reconciliation with loss and further explorations of new mental/sonic realms.

Hallbäck defines his approach as not being married to any particular machine, instrument, process or genre. However he holds a particular affinity to sampling, of which, he says, provides the dirt and grit amongst what would otherwise be pristine, generic machine music. The contemporary crate digging method of scouring obscure download music bogs for unique sounds was his preferred research practice.

Peck Glamour is an album full of tracks brimming with the excitement of exploration. It's the results of a mind informed by punk, industrial, techno, dancefloor, disappointment, trauma and rebirth. Here the synthetic and authentic is viewed simply as the same means of human rationale and expression.

The opening, ‘Catch Up to Light’, sets the scene with ecstatic and odd fluorescent vocals sliding amongst crystalline likembe whilst synths swirl amongst the external festivities. ‘Orbiting Empty Cocoon’ is somewhat a homage to the alien sound worlds of The Orb, one which takes the listener deeper into a mind melting array of teased potential as visual elements are executed in a mask of audio wizardry and euphoric staccato rhythms, the later being a nod to Singeli music. ‘Patitur Butcher’ is more dance frontal utilising the Ghatam drum and a YouTube rip of a Chinese language lesson. ‘Plastic Bag Putain’ was made during the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and should be clear of its intent. ‘All that Heaven Allows’ is a marimba cover of an imaginary Love Parade anthem. 'Kyrie Geire’ potentially briefly fills the void left by the demise of Coil. The entire trip of Peck Glamour is sewn up with ‘We left before we came’ whereby extraneous recordings of double bass player Gregory Vartian-Foss (tuning/strumming/moving the bass) are superimposed with local field recordings to create a gorgeous bed of sounds acting as an exciting exit music to this sharp collection of cinematic ear excursions.

Twenty-four years on from its original release, Monolake's seminal Gravity receives its first vinyl pressing courtesy of Field Records. Occupying its own space at the intersection of dub techno, minimal and electronica, it's an ageless album of staggering vision and technological prowess which has matured into an all-time pillar of electronic music. This edition, remastered by the album's key architect Robert Henke, follows on from the recent reissue of Monolake's first album, Hongkong.

Arriving just after the turn of the millennium, Gravity marked a turning point for Monolake. With co-founder Gerhard Behles moving on to other ventures, Henke produced most of the album solo and journeyed deeper into spatial exploration and the dub-informed principles that underpinned their project from the start. Minimalism and negative space run through the whole record, from the keen slithers of percussion pinging through lattices of delay to the hypnotising pulse of subliminal basslines anchoring the tracks. Gravity is a record which hangs on techno's linearity as a form of meditation, but the crystalline clarity of the mix allows every micro-fluctuation in rhythm and sound to cut through.

Compared to a lot of overly sterile digital music released in the early 2000s, Gravity endures thanks to the warmth and texture Henke elicited from his processes — even when leaning into none-more-digital effects like bit reduction. He described the ninth-floor view over Berlin from his studio at night as a key influence on the sound of the record, but the space Gravity shapes out feels thrillingly implacable. Unbound by the standard conventions of time and space, Gravity stands proud as a true original and finally gets the ceremonious vinyl pressing it so richly deserves.

Channeling the Euro-pop sensibilities of Crepuscule and the ethereal goth of 4AD, Vazz arrived in Glasgow just as the Sound of Young Scotland was taking off. Armed with a drum machine, guitar, bass, and Anna Howson’s icy cooing, the duo offered a darker take to a scene dominated by poptimists Orange Juice, Josef K, and Aztec Camera. This 40th anniversary edition of their 1986 mini-album Your Lungs and Your Tongues compiles their complete Cathexis recordings and adds a handful of unissued minimal wave pearls. Colder than Dalwhinnie on the solstice—better bring a parka.</p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VahXG1J3AE0?si=QoQJcsuiv7F3611W" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Japan’s cult, half-forgotten goldmine DD. Records opened and closed within a few frantic years. In that short time, they released exactly 222 cassettes (and a handful of vinyl records) of the strangest, boldest, most arresting and addictively subversive music within their social and creative circles. Each of their cassette releases came with abstract, xerographic artwork, often created by the musician themselves, while the label’s recorded output encompassed avant-punk, Cubist ambient music, sound collage, pop concréte, jazz-prog, early computer music, and anything else their roster cared to throw at them. Housed in sleeves of found imagery taken from classical and Medieval literature, contemporary and historic photography, science textbooks, magazines, homemade erotica, and endless more, these records reveal not only the strength of the community the label had fostered, but also the insular self-reference and in-jokes that kept the music from outsiders for decades. Two facets of DD. Records shine through even this unique story: firstly, they were friends. Founder T. [Tadashi] Kamada formed the label alone, but it wasn’t long before he was joined by like-minded allies T. [Teruo] Nakamura, K. [Koshiro] Yoshimatsu, K. [Keiichi] Usami, and T. [Takafumi] Isotani, among a few others. All were contributors to Kamada’s tape-trading network The Recycle Circle, formed at the University of Yamanashi, most of its members at the time around 20 years old. Their bond was a love of exploratory sounds and a hunger for deeper excavations into the tunnels and caves of experimental music. “An independent, private circle where members who owned expensive records or rare imported vinyl with limited distribution could send a cassette tape and a return postage stamp to dub the record back to each other for free,” Usami explains, in interview with Jon Dale for Bandcamp Daily. Secondly, the aforementioned cassettes remained almost entirely unavailable to the world outside Japan, with only a single US retailer engaged to carry the releases. Forty plus years hence, many of the records have been lost to time, but occasionally surface when (so writes an online observer) “a private collector has a medical bill to cover.” A German archivist, Jorg Öpitz, is primarily (and almost exclusively) responsible for the entire English-language directory of the label’s output, cataloguing online surviving and lost cassettes with completist dedication. Largely autodidactic, and almost always hermetic, this company of hobbyist and amateur (and in many cases, totally untrained) musicians rarely performed live. Many of them collaborated remotely, sending home-recorded tapes and collaged artwork in the post. “[We were] isolated from the rest of the [Japanese] indie movement,” Usami remembers. Strangely, and sadly for many, Tadashi Kamada has completely retired from public view. According to one-time collaborators, it is likely he is unaware of the cult following his label has garnered over the decades. Some sources point to a successful career in consumer electronics, a family, and a contented indifference to his early experiments in record label curation. But no-one seems certain about these details, none of which has harmed the image of a label that revels in mythmaking. An artefact left behind was Disk Musik. Though compilations were not unknown to DD. Records, vinyl was rare. Only a handful of Kamada titles - presumably self-funded - were released on vinyl, right at the start of the label’s life, and it is not until 1985 and Disk Musik that the format reemerges. It appears to be their final release: a parting gift to neatly bookend five feverish years of new music, rubber stamping their creative identity. In the twenty-first century, the second hand market for original copies is limited to scarce private sales at seriously hefty prices. There are endless and curious gems within. Opening with the fried psych-folk, dreamy vocals, and toybox percussion of trio サーカディアンリズム [Circadian Rhythm], Disk Musik’s stall is set out as much to bewilder as it is to beguile. Following, comes musician and painter Kumio Kurachi’s project Kum, with its homespun, acoustic glam-stomp always on the verge of falling to pieces, but revealing genuine songwriting chops and earworming melodic detail beneath the knowingly applied layers of hauntology, noise, and humour. Later, Tomomichi Nishiyama sends intergalactic plates spinning into black holes of solarstorm feedback with 10T track “Israel”, while T. Isotani’s “½ Orange” provides a welcome return to earth, an edenic utopia of plantasic blossoms and blooms. Across an extended duration (over fifty minutes on a single disc!), Disk Musik is relentless in its invention, wildly varied in its expression, and entrancing in its telling of a story truly unique in the world of independent and alternative music. Where else could Tadashi Tsukimoto’s rambling outsider folksong marry Yip/Jump primitivism to the scorched Casiotone ambience of “In and Out” by Takahiro Kuramoto’s Mask? While extensive efforts were made to contact every musician featured on Disk Musik, some are no longer within reach of known DD. Records associates. Keiichi Usami, Kumio Kurachi, and Teruo Nakamura all gladly approved the reissue of this compilation in the absence of their peers, and were vitally helpful throughout the curation process, offering insights into the history and significance of each artist and track featured here. We could not have done it without them. Usami-san, Kumio-san, Teruo-san: thank you. “Everyone has the right to make and enjoy music,” Tadashi Kamada once wrote. This spirit of inclusivity and equality underpins DD. Records and its gleefully weird catalogue, and we are grateful for it.

Morio Agata's incidental masterpiece from 1980. The important work "The Vehicle Book", which later influenced Jim O'Rourke and the rest of the world, has been officially re-released on CD and LP in the U.S., and the LP has been distributed exclusively in Japan. [Completely limited edition

1977 "I Love You." Morio Agata, who had disappeared from the stage for about two years after his major work "Eien no Toukoku" (Eternal Faraway Country), which he had been working on since its release, was approached by Yuzuru Agi, editor-in-chief of Rock Magazine, the sharpest cultural music magazine in Osaka and the leader of Vanity Records, and in November 1979, in order to reset the music for the coming 80's, he created the album in two days. In November 1979, he created the "Vehicle Pictorial Book" in two days in order to reset the course for the coming 80s. This was an important work that became the basis for Morio Agata, who soon became a child of A, formed Virgin VS, and once again enjoyed success in the first half of the 80s.

 

Kind Regards is the second duo release from guitarist Oren Ambarchi and drummer Eric Thielemans, out via AD 93 on the 21st February 2025.

The record captures an expansive performance in Poitiers, France in November 2023. First working together in an unpredictable trio with minimalist legend and eccentric extraordinaire Charlemagne Palestine, Ambarchi and Thielemans quickly established a remarkable musical chemistry that led to an ongoing series of duo concerts, including the performance documented on their LP Double Consciousness (Matière Mémorie, 2023).

Kind Regards finds the duo refining their shared language while continuing to take risks, allowing the music’s gravitational pull to lead them from meditative calm to unexpectedly expressive passages of melodic invention and rhythmic drive. Recorded in sparkling fidelity and carefully mixed by Ambarchi’s longtime collaborator Joe Talia, the LP contains a single unbroken performance, stretching out for over 45 minutes. Guitar and drums weave together into a symbiotic whole that nevertheless affords us ample opportunity to marvel at the highly personal approaches these two musicians have developed to their chosen instruments through decades of diverse collaboration and prolific performance.

The set begins with Thielemans’ hypnotic tom patterns, around which Ambarchi’s wavering, shimmering guitar tones—achieved with the help of the rotating speaker of a Leslie cabinet—flurry and swirl. Thielemans’ drums play subtle tricks with time and perception, adding and dropping beats within repeated patterns to create an effect at once rhythmically insistent and liquified. Growing at first into a rapidly pulsing texture of brushed drums and flickering harmonics, the music builds momentum into an irregular groove over which Ambarchi’s guitar is transformed into haunting, monumental electric organ chords, strikingly recalling the Wurlitzer work of Alice Coltrane, before settling into a section of gentle portamento melody embedded into the tactile clicks and clangs of Thielemans’ percussion.
When Thielemans adopts a more traditional jazz approach to the kit in some of the set’s second half, the results are stunning, demonstrating a feel for shifting accents and sensibility to the touch of the stick on the drum or cymbal that recalls greats like Jack De Johnette or Billy Hart (one of Thielemans’ mentors). And when Ambarchi turns up the heat, he does so in an unexpected and delightful way, letting loose a swarm of jittering delayed tones straight out of Henry Kaiser’s classic It’s a Wonderful Life, with a more active use of the guitar’s fretboard than his usual approach to the instrument allows. As the performance draws to a close after a climactic episode of distorted harmonic groans and crashing cymbals that manages to be at once thunderous and carefully attuned to detail, it is clearer than ever that, for these two serial collaborators, this is a very special pairing.

Kind Regards shows us the kind of magic that can happen when two masters who have dedicated decades to reimagining their instruments simply begin to play, following the music wherever it goes. 

"Best New Reissue" - Pitchfork (May 6, 2023) Legendary debut album by Junko Tange, originally issued by Osaka’s Vanity Records in 1979. Dadaesque recitations and sparse guitar, piano and electronic meanderings combine for a beguiling, hypnotic dreamworld. Officially licensed from the custodians of Yuzuru Agi's Vanity Records archives, this edition has been fully remastered from new transfers of the original analog tapes by Stephan Mathieu.

The new recording of The Book of Sounds is an intimate exploration of the piano by pianist Carlos Cipa - a way of looking into the sound, of listening into the moment when Cipa's fingers press down on the piano keys.
The Book of Sounds, created between 1979 and 1982 by composer and pianist Hans Otte, is a musical pendulum movement of one hour in twelve 'pieces', as the composer himself describes them. Chords and melodies repeat themselves, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly;
they follow each other in harmonic cadences and yet never dissolve - a timeless back and forth.
The Book of Sounds is the European-German answer to the concert music of American minimalism. But it is also the essence of many questions about society and the human condition at that time. Not very fond of hierarchical thinking, Otte manifested an alternative to the virtuoso genius habitus of composers - astonishing when you consider that he produced and commissioned works by Karlheinz Stockhausen and other 'greats' as a radio editor in Bremen from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Otte spent three years composing the 12 pieces, and seldom have simple chords and melodies been so selectively staged. It is a process of endless reduction - no wild sound dramaturgies, no climaxes, hardly any beginning or end. The interpreting pianist, and in the case of the first recording it was Otte himself, simply prepares a tableaux of perception for the listener.
A withdrawal of the author, a personal signatur should not be recognizable. Cipa naturally sets accents; he recorded the 12 pieces on three different pianos - a Steinway grand piano, a Yamaha upright piano, and a Yamaha CP-70, an early electric piano - to help shape the tonal characteristics.
Inspired by Zen Buddhism, Otte was convinced that a return to simplicity, to the unagitated - a piano, harmonic cadences, a middle register - frees the listener to focus on what is really important in art: the human being. Introspection begins with listening. Today it is called deep listening. Otte himself formulated it as follows:
The Book of Sounds is "dedicated to all those who want to be close to the sounds, so that they can uncover their own resonance in search of the sound of sounds, the secret of life."
Carlos Cipa hits the nerve of the times with this new recording. What music can be as art is still up for debate today. The Book of Sounds is not 'art-proof' and in this it is still a provocation today; absolutely unspectacular and practising relaxation. It is a wonderful invitation to feel, experience, and perhaps even find oneself in the confrontation with the work - and for a moment not to fuel the discourse. Art that doesn't want to be art. Cipa, who otherwise appears as a composer himself, here carries out Otte's intended gesture of withdrawal in a double sense and steps into the background as creator but also interpreter, in order to bequeath The Book of Sounds to the loudspeakers and headphones at home in one step forward.
Liner notes by Bastian Zimmermann 

Like all three HTRK albums, 2009's Marry Me Tonight is singular in sound and circumstance. It's the only album the outfit recorded from start to finish as a trio, and it's the only HTRK record that bears the co-production stamp of Rowland S. Howard. Breathy, caustic and rife with contradiction, _Marry Me Tonight _took the raw material recorded on 2005's Nostalgia and transformed it into a pop record—pop that buckled and warped beneath the glare of Howard, fellow producer Lindsay Gravina and the HTRK trio: Jonnine Standish, Nigel Yang and Sean Stewart. Howard died at the end of 2009; Stewart died the year after. Things would never be the same.</p><iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 439px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1991166217/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://htrk.bandcamp.com/album/marry-me-tonight">Marry Me Tonight by HTRK</a></iframe>

Formed from the ashes of Rema-Rema and Mass in the early '80s, The Wolfgang Press were originally a trio of bassist and vocalist Michael Allen, keyboardist Mark Cox and guitarist Andrew Gray. They were one of 4AD's longest-running acts, and shifted from pitch-black, industrial-tinged post-punk in their early years to funky, hip-hop-inspired avant-dance as they stepped into the '90s. But since '94's 'Funky Little Demons' they've been relatively quiet. There was a compilation of unreleased career-spanning material mostly penned by Allen and Gray released in 2020, but 'A 2nd Shape' is the first all-new gear from the duo in almost 30 years, with Gray's brother Stephen replacing Cox on keys. It's a fitting move for Downwards too; not only do The Wolfgang Press neatly straddle the label's musical poles, but the band's '88 high point 'Bird Wood Cage' is an enduring favourite of Karl O'Connor.

 

 

'A 2nd Shape' reflects The Wolfgang Press's output up to and including that touchstone - the soulful, sampledelic mood of 'Queer' (and it's popular single 'A Girl Like You') is nowhere to be found. Allen's signature dubbed-out basslines are front and centre on 'The Garden of Eden', booming over gnarled synths and a blitzed, slo-mo drum machine - the bleakness of 'The Burden of Mules' is latent, but sliced into bits by discordant feedback and dissociated FX. The band have always been hyper aware of contemporary musical developments, and it sounds as if they're offering a corrective here in a landscape pocked by post-punk pretenders. On '21st Century', Allen snarls knowingly over menacing oscillations: "The 21st century can tell you who you are, can tell you what you're thinking." The music's not a remnant of the past, but a way for The Wolfgang Press to acknowledge their tenure while peering into tomorrow. 

 

 

'Take It Backwards' is the album's most direct post-punk stomper, it's got all the hallmarks you'd expect to find - reverberating guitars, resonant bass, ice-cold synths - but sounds as if it's been infected with modern paranoia. If the trio's early run was marked by inky depression, their new material sounds just as umbral, but far more self-assured. "The future has been set to one side," Allen deadpans on 'Rest Your Mind', slurring over horizontal drums and fuzzy clouds of electronics. They might have lost their appetite for funk, but The Wolfgang Press's claws have never sounded so razor sharp - 'A 2nd Shape' is the rarest of comeback albums, one that captures the OG magic without a shred of pastiche or a trace of repetition. 

<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 439px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3832907613/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://regis-dns.bandcamp.com/album/a-2nd-shape-2">A 2nd Shape by The Wolfgang Press ( TWP )</a></iframe>

Demdike Stare’s DDS label kicks off a new series of limited edition 12”s with the return of Shinichi Atobe, offering a slow evolution of his inimitable deep house, finely balanced with a new found sub-heavy bias while unlocking extra space in the upper registers.

 

 

Atobe’s third 12” since debuting on Chain Reaction in 2001 marks a subtle but crucial development of his style, leaning towards classically deep, dub house templates. On both sides he adds supple flesh and hypnotic emotive pathos to his stripped formula, resulting in some of the most immediate and enduring work in his canon thus far. It coincidentally also marks a decade since he first graced DDS with his debut album ‘Butterfly Effect’, followed by a tranche of cultishly acclaimed albums in the years since.

 

 

On the A-side pearl ‘Ongaku 1’ he steps out with a shimmering take on the effortless gait of M-Series blueprints, as derived from the deepest NYC house, delicately ornamented with cascading levels of detail. Precision-tooled kicks precipitate Prescription-via-Maurizio feathered dub chords, interlaced with a frisson of darker strings and synth melodies for the full goosebump. ‘Dub 6(six)’ on the flip whisks up a psychedelic lattice of arps and synth voices with ruder bass ballast, taking its sweet time before the kicks come to swing the ‘floor deep and wide. 

 

 

Straight bullets, no messing.

</p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kB71TeOPVRc?si=Quma1D_FpEXaGCz2" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OwvltlSAiJE?si=l59StSHIHTnfA_Hf" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

In celebration of its 30th anniversary, Plastikman, aka Richie Hawtin, has remastered his groundbreaking second album, Musik, from the original tapes for a new limited bio-vinyl edition. The record was first released in November 1994 through NovaMute and Plus 8, following the debut Plastikman album, Sheet One (1993). A masterclass in minimal techno, Musik quickly propelled Hawtin to new levels of success. The release followed Plastikman’s first-ever live performance in a black vinyl-encased room at a semi-derelict Packard Plant in Detroit, where Hawtin was central to the burgeoning underground scene. Before the full album hit the shelves, the track "Plastique" (which was later described by Q as “...the flipside to Hawtin’s early singles, all ticking percussion, feline acid tweaks, and cushioned sub-bass”) set the stage for a more dance floor-friendly album, albeit one with an unsettling and sinister side. The album, described by The Guardian as “music as you've never heard it before” and by The Wire, who made it one of their Albums of the Year, as “... a masterpiece”, defined a moment in techno that still echoes today. Now, 30 years later, the album has been remastered from the original tapes, reminding us why Plastikman is a name that still resonates and that the album’s intensity – on and off the dance floor – has lost none of its potency in the intervening years.

Dark Entries flashes back to the grimy streets of New York City circa 1982 to bring us an unreleased album from cult outfit Ike Yard. Comprised of Stuart Argabright, Michael Diekmann, Kenneth Compton, and Fred Szymanski, Ike Yard sits between the sinewy proto-body music of the Neue Deutsche Welle and the shattered grooves of their No Wave peers in New York. The band’s initial run was short but blinding. They released an EP for Les Disques du Crépuscule in 1981, which was followed by their legendary self-titled LP for Factory in 1982. They disbanded within a year, frustrated by the slow pace at which the industry was able to release their increasingly challenging music. 1982 features 10 tracks which likely would have become the band’s second LP - only four of these songs have previously seen release on 2006’s 1980-82 Collected via Acute Records. Following the release of Ike Yard, they continued down their tortured path of hybrid electro-acoustic music with an arsenal of now-classic analog instruments, including the Korg MS-20 and the Roland TR-808. Skittering rhythms teeter on the verge of collapse while seasick synth warbles threaten to push us overboard. Electronic washes devolve into waves of feedback. Sneering basslines threaten dancers to move, but how can the body obey? This is dangerous music, gliding along the brink. The album features a live photo of the band by Makoto Iida and includes an insert with liner notes from Stuart Argabright. 1982 is essential for fans of post-punk and caustic electronics from Liaisons Dangereuses to Beau Wanzer.

Dark Entries celebrates its 15th anniversary with legendary synth-punk deviants Crash Course in Science. Dale Feliciello, Mallory Yago, and Michael Zodorozny formed CCIS in 1979 after meeting at art school in Philadelphia. As a gesture born of equal parts punk irreverence and brute necessity, the band incorporated toy instruments and kitchen appliances into their aggressive, angular sound. Their anthems “Cardboard Lamb” and “Flying Turns” from 1981’s Signals From Pier Thirteen EP have been staples in adventurous DJ sets for over 40 years - yet some of their finest work is to be found on Near Marineland, a full-length LP recorded in 1981 but remained unreleased in its time. Near Marineland shows the band moving into more diverse and polished territory (although it’s still as abrasive as sandpaper). Tracks like “No More Hollow Doors” and “Jump Over Barrels” highlight CCIS’s singular knack for embedding infectiously monotone hooks in their stiff-yet-funky grooves. Elsewhere we see CCIS going fully unhinged, like on the searing “Someone Reads” or the demented “Pompeii Spared”, where a spray of honks is barely glued together by a frantic synthetic pulse. While this masterwork of malfunctioning analog electronics has surfaced on a few occasions - this first time stand alone remaster includes four never-before-released bonus tracks and includes a lyric sheet. Near Marineland is crucial listening for all devotees of synth-punk and minimal electronics.

Dark Entries calls on Philadelphia experimental duo The Ghostwriters to resurrect their 1981 LP of minimalist mayhem, Objects In Mirrors Are Closer Than They Appear. The late Buchla maestro Charles Cohen and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Cain joined up in 1971 to craft electroacoustic chaos as Anomali, later renaming themselves The Ghostwriters. Their collaborations with choreographers and visual media artists led to their singular style, straddling improvisation and composition, the oneiric and the immediate. 1981 saw the release of their debut album, Objects In Mirrors Are Closer Than They Appear, a whirling, messy, telepathic slipstream cascading across an imaginary landscape. Recorded in Don Buchla’s childhood home, Objects offers 8 cuts of minimalist electronic bliss, equal parts icy and quirky, with standout cuts including the grooving havoc of “Fix it in the Mix” and the otherworldly hymn “Moon Chant.” These angular pearls will be cherished by fans of John Bender, Ceramic Hello, and all strains of outsider 80s electronics. Objects In Mirrors Are Closer Than They Appear has been freshly remastered and includes an insert with photos and liner notes. Proceeds from the album will be donated to SOSA (Safe from Online Sex Abuse), a nonprofit that combats online child sex abuse and trafficking.